11/23/2004

Interesting Stuff

Google searches for scienceOn 17 November, Google Inc. announced the addition of a new search engine, called Google Scholar, that points to Web pages containing documents such as peer reviewed papers, books, and technical reports. The search service, located at scholar.google.com, will make it easier for scientists and other researchers to find articles and papers related to their fields. Though most scholarly papers are indexed on the Web, their contents are often not publicly available.

The new service also addresses the longstanding need of students and researchers in developing nations for access to up-to-date materials unavailable in conventional libraries. Anurag Acharya, an engineer at Google who led the project, told the New York Times that global access to research may spur innovation. “We don’t know where the next breakthrough will come from. We want everyone to be able to stand on the shoulders of giants.”

The project was made possible through the cooperation of scientific and technical publishers, including the IEEE, the Association of Computing Machinery, Nature, and the Online Computer Library Center.

The proof is in the printerComputer researchers have made it easier for sleuths to catch criminals who use laser printers to carry out their illicit deeds. A team from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., proved that every printer has a unique signature based on the way it lays ink down on a page and has developed techniques for matching a document with a specific printer. Edward Delp, a Purdue professor who led the team, told BBC News that the team takes “mathematical features, or measurements, from printed letters, then [uses] image analysis and pattern recognition techniques to identify the printer.” In 11 out of 12 tests of this method, it successfully pointed to the printer used to create a document.

Explaining why all printers, which appear identical, are different, Professor Jan Allebach, a member of the team, said, “For a company to make printers all behave exactly the same way would require tightening the manufacturing tolerances to the point where each printer would be too expensive for consumers.”